Ticketmaster

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Ticketmaster
Ticketmaster Logo
Type of Company Subsidiary
Founded
Headquarters West Hollywood, California, USA
Industry Ticketing
Parent IAC/InterActiveCorp
Website www.ticketmaster.com

Ticketmaster is the world's largest seller of event tickets. It is based in West Hollywood, California, USA, but has operations in many countries around the world. Typically, Ticketmaster's clients (arenas, stadiums, and theatres) control their events, and Ticketmaster simply acts as an agent, selling the tickets that the clients make available to them.

One of the first ticketing companies to sell tickets on the Internet, Ticketmaster now sells a large percentage of its tickets online, some via phone, and almost none through its once large and important, but now mostly vanished, network of ticket outlets. On April 28, 1997, Ticketmaster sued Microsoft over its Sidewalk service for allegedly deep linking into Ticketmaster's site. The suit was settled after a two-year legal battle in which Ticketmaster claimed that linking to specific pages on an Internet site without permission was an unfair practice.

Ticketmaster has recently devoted significant resources to keeping up with fraud and offers the usual variety of options available for consumer goods. Other technology includes barcoded tickets, which offers the ability for counterfeit ticket to be refused at the point of entrance.

Although Ticketmaster's market share remains over 50% of total sales for tickets in the United States, the ready availability of web-based ticketing software and the decline of its outlet network have combined to keep its overall sales from growing in 2004 and 2005.

Major League Baseball's acquisition of rival Tickets.com in 2005 marks the most significant organization moving away from using Ticketmaster's services.

Ticketmaster is owned by IAC/InterActiveCorp, a large company that also owns many other popular Internet sites and services.

Contents

[edit] Service fees

As an example of a fairly typical markup, a ticket to see Motorhead at Brixton Academy, London 2006, will cost £25, plus £3.75 per ticket service charge, plus £4.95 postage and packing per order. In this example, the fees are approximately an additional 35% of the cost of the ticket. More expensive tickets would have higher charges, but generally proportionately less relative to the total: tickets to see Pavarotti at Chatsworth House were selling for £85 for the ticket, £8 service charge per ticket, and £2.50 per order for either postal delivery or box office collection. A day ticket to T in the Park costs £56.50 face value but with extra charges it goes up to £63.50.

Ticketmaster also charges a fee for ticket delivery, even if the ticket is in the form of an automatically generated virtual "e-ticket", which the buyer must then print out themselves, at their own expense. Buyers may also be charged an extra fee to collect the ticket(s) from the venue.

Ticketmaster may receive income from the face value of the tickets it sells, depending on how they negotiate a specific deal. This may affect how artists and promoters set their final ticket prices. In some cases, Ticketmaster only makes money from service charges and handling fees that are added on to the final ticket price. Sometimes parts of the service charge fees goes to the promoter or venue rather than to Ticketmaster.

[edit] Ticket sales market

Ticketmaster frequently obtains agreements to become the sole provider of tickets for large venues, in keeping with a business strategy it has used since the 1980's when it consolidated regional ticketing services into a single entity. In many cases, acquiring this exclusivity requires Ticketmaster to pay substantial "signing bonuses" to venues, sometimes millions of dollars. Although this practice can significantly reduce the profitability to Ticketmaster of these exclusive relationships, to date using these bonuses has enabled them to maintain venue exclusivity as a competitive strategy, though the future viability of this strategy is unclear as the Internet as the primary sales channel for tickets makes exclusivity a less attractive option for venues.

Ticketmaster is the subject of frequent complaints in the blogosphere and print media due to high ticket service charges. Notably, in the 1990s, Pearl Jam brought a lawsuit alleging that Ticketmaster is a monopoly, whose anticompetitive practices allow markup prices of more than 30%. Ticketmaster was found to be not guilty of violating antitrust law.

Competitors of Ticketmaster sometimes offer to charge lower service charges, or the ability for clients to keep more of the service charges for themselves. Competitors include Vendini.com, Etix.com, Tickets.com, Stubhub, and America Online. TicketWeb, a Ticketmaster subsidiary also offers lower fees. These companies are typically excluded from primary ticket sales for major-league sports events in the U.S.(with the exception of Major League Baseball, which, as noted below, is now the owner of number 2 competitor Tickets.com).

Ticketmaster is the primary ticket seller for 27 of the 30 NHL teams and 28 of 30 NBA teams, but in 2005, Major League Baseball acquired Ticketmaster rival Tickets.com. Some analysts expect MLB to stop using Ticketmaster for the sale of its approximately 100,000,000 baseball tickets per year once current contracts with Ticketmaster have expired.

Also of concern to the company is declining sales in the highly profitable concert business. Off by double-digit percentages in 2005 from 2004, the summer concert season is a major profit center for the company with its high per-ticket prices and accompanying high service fees.

Ticketmaster has had only limited success in the secondary ticketing market. In September 2003, Ticketmaster announced plans to sell tickets in Internet auctions, which would bring the price of tickets closer to market prices, but its market share compared to that of ebay or stubhub.com remain small and internet auctions are still a relatively quiet part of its business. Indeed, since around the time of the 2003 announcement, Ticketmaster has lost the lead in the secondary ticketing market to new entrants like Stubhub, who've developed a popular and effective person to person market for tickets. Recently, Ticketmaster President Sean Moriarty appeared on a story about the ticketing business on NPR and pleaded for legislation that would make the selling of tickets from person to person illegal except through Ticketmaster's own product for this purpose.

[edit] Privacy

The company's use of personal information is more aggressive than most: a term that users wishing to purchase from their website must agree to is to receive Ticketmaster marketing:

"By completing this registration form you indicate that you consent to Ticketmaster sharing your email address and other information with those who provide the event, and that you consent to those who provide the event using your information to contact you by email or other means to send you marketing or other messages or using or disclosing your information in other ways. By completing this registration form, you also indicate that you consent to Ticketmaster contacting you by email or other means to send you marketing or other messages and using and disclosing the information you submit, as described in the Ticketmaster Privacy

This term is actually somewhat less aggressive than previously, following criticism [1] [2] [3] [4], and accusations of spamming. However, users of the site automatically receive a regular "My Account" email, which comes with the notice "By signing up to Ticketmaster you agreed to receive this email. If you do not want to receive it, you can edit your preferences on the site". In other words, Ticketmaster deliberately does not allow users to opt-out at signup from unwanted email in order to increase the audience for its marketing, and the unsubscribe procedure requires the user to login to a web page: there is no simple unsubscribe link or email address.

More recently, Ticketmaster.com customers have complained about being enrolled without consent for the Entertainment Rewards program of sister company entertainment.com. Customers complain that despite explicitly refusing offers made to them while buying tickets through Ticketmaster.com, a $9 a month charge continues to appear on their monthly statements. Customers have also complained that these charges continue to accrue month to month and that Ticketmaster is unresponsive in stopping or removing these charges. If the allegations are true, Ticketmaster has not only shared personally identifying information to a sister company without consent, but also transmitted credit card information without consent. Whereas aggressively sharing information for marketing may be considered bad netiquette and in the extreme could give rise to civil liability, unauthorized charges to credit cards can potentially be criminal. This hasn't been proven, but the allegations are far more serious than older complaints of aggressive marketing via email.

Customers can opt out by telephone; the charges should stop within three months of the call. Also, the Better Business Bureau in Troy, Michigan, where Entertainment Rewards is based, is capable of handling complaints.

[edit] Lawsuit

In 1993, Ticketmaster was sued by rock band Pearl Jam for adopting monopolistic practices and refusing to charge lower service fees for the band's tickets. At the time, Pearl Jam wanted to keep ticket prices under $20 for their fans. Additionally, Ticketmaster threatened to cancel contracts of any venues that would host Pearl Jam's concerts without using Ticketmaster as a distributor. This culminated in the cancelation of the tour. [5] [6]

[edit] Stifling Public Commentary and Freedom of Speech

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The company's use of its Terms Of Service contract to limit public commentary on its shows and events goes far beyond that of most artists, promotors, and venues, not only disallowing the use of cameras and recording devices as standard but also contractually precluding anyone attending a Ticketmaster event from even describing the event in something as simple as an email:

"Recording, Transmission and Exhibition"
" You agree not to record or transmit, or aid in recording or transmitting, any description, account, picture, or reproduction of the event."

This statement appears to give Ticketmaster the right to legally exclude attendees of its events from commenting on those events either publicly or privately, whether via email, blog, or web site or by definition using a traditional recording device such as a pen and paper.

Not surprisingly, Ticketmaster's TOS appears to strip those same rights from its attendees, allowing Ticketmaster seeming carte blanche with its attendees images, statements and personal information:

"You grant permission to utilize your image, likeness, actions and statements in any live or recorded audio, video, or photographic display or other transmission, exhibition, publication or reproduction made of, or at, the event (regardless of whether before, during or after play or performance) in any medium or context without further authorization or compensation."

Whether these clauses may be enforceable, especially when a venue is owned by a public entity such as a city park or public auditorium where significant freedom of speech issues may arise, has yet to be tested in court.

[edit] External links

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